


The Strongest Wizard in the World

by flickerface



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 20:39:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flickerface/pseuds/flickerface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He did his PhD in theoretical physics.  He wrote two dissertations: one of them he gave to his committee, and the other--which used quantum mechanics and magic together to explain both of them, as much as you could ever explain either of them--he sent to the Headmaster at Hogwarts.  It was, he thought, carrying the package down to the Oxford owlery, a sort of apology.  But (he had to admit, even to himself) a rather boastful sort.</p>
<p>(Tumblr did it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strongest Wizard in the World

_What do you want?_ a voice asked in his ear.

Four tables of students stared at him, as well as the terrified line of newcomers.

_I want to know everything. About--about_ everything, he thought fiercely. _About atoms and magic and how the universe works._

The voice laughed quietly, and then shouted, "Slytherin!"  
* * *  
Nobody quite understood why the Slytherin first-year carried so many books around, or stayed so late in the library. His house-mates gently encouraged him to lighten up by stealing the library books off his bedside table.

After that none of his fellow Slytherins talked to him much. He was okay with that. If they didn't try to talk to him, he could get so much more reading done.  
* * *  
After Hogwarts, college was boring. Over the weekends he went to bookstores in other countries, Apparating or using Floo Powder, and bought magical tomes by the (small) armload. Disguising them as course texts was easy, and then he could carry them around with him: to lectures, to meetings with his tutors, to the laboratory when he had an experiment running.

Things got much more exciting when they taught him quantum mechanics--it was like magic, only sometimes it made sense--and even more when, later, they let him come up with his own experiments. 

He did his PhD in theoretical physics. He wrote two dissertations: one of them he gave to his committee, and the other--which used quantum mechanics and magic together to explain both of them, as much as you could ever explain either of them--he sent to the Headmaster at Hogwarts. It was, he thought, carrying the package down to the Oxford owlery, a sort of apology. But (he had to admit, even to himself) a rather boastful sort.  
* * *  
In 1992, he was working remotely with a USA team on plans for the Superconducting Super Collider. It was going to be the biggest, best particle collider that anyone had ever built.

And then in June, as he was running calculations on his computer, a wave of something magical crashed through his office and left the answers slightly--very slightly--different.

He saved the file, drank an entire pot of coffee, and re-checked all of his math. It should have all worked, but for the rest of the day, it didn't. When he came back the next morning and ran it again, though, the answers came out the same as they always had.

It happened again the next year, but he didn't catch it that time for two weeks; he'd left a program compiling on his computer that day and didn't bother to check it. In October the US government canceled the project, citing social and economic factors. 

The most powerful wizard in the world swore profusely, shut down his computer, and left to get ridiculously drunk.

After he'd recovered from his hangover, he built a watch. It was small, had only one hand, and ticked only when it felt like it. The dial had one symbol on it: a tiny lightning bolt.

When the hand reached the lightning bolt almost exactly one year later, he shut down everything he was working on and took the next three days off work. Space and Time were peculiar enough without Narrative getting involved.  
* * *  
He still couldn't quite bring himself to throw away the watch. When the Large Hadron Collider had a magnetic quench problem and shut down for three months to fix it--right after it was supposed to start up--he spent a week taking his watch apart to make sure it wasn't broken. After all, it hadn't warned him this time. 

But it seemed that Voldemort dying really had changed things this time, and that Harry Potter kid was settling down nicely to live a quiet life. Thank God. 

He re-designed the watch to warn him about any major magical or narratival events, strapped it back on, and wound it. The tiny hand drifted around uncertainly, like a compass failing to find north. 

Sometimes maybe these things just happened without magic being involved, he supposed.

He still couldn't throw it away, though. 

(He got a pretty good shock in 2017.)


End file.
